Advertising

About the project

THE CHALLENGE

South African Tourism came to us with a problem – there weren’t enough Australians choosing South Africa as a place to go for their holiday. We conducted some research and soon discovered why: Many Aussies saw South Africa as a great place to visit if you wanted to see him, and him, and……some of them.”

In short, the entire country was perceived to be little more than one big safari park. Our job was to show potential visitors that there’s more to South Africa than big game hunting and inspire them to venture into the unknown.

THE INSIGHT

People who have actually been to South Africa come back with much more than safari snapshots. They’ll tell you it was an intensely different experience to anything they’ve encountered before. It’s vibrant, invigorating and full of surprises - A far cry from the comfortable monotony of our normal lives.

THE IDEA

We wanted to show Australians what lay beyond the safari park, and highlight everything else this vast continent has to offer - like world-renowned wine and cuisine, culture, surfing and adventure sports. We did this by creating an integrated campaign that let people create their own virtual South Africa tour, and encouraged them to “Leave ordinary behind”.

In an Australian first, we partnered with Google maps to create an interactive platform that featured a range of user-generated and official video content showcasing South Africa’s many attractions. Print, TV and activations drove traffic to the site. Once there, people could explore South Africa by viewing the video content that was specific to each geographic location - giving them a taste of the many unique experiences on offer.

Users were encouraged to pick their top South African attractions. These virtual holiday highlights were then used to generate a customised holiday video – and if the user had logged in using Facebook, the video was made even more personal by integrating photos and info from their profile.

THE RESULTS

Our campaign drove huge amounts of traffic to the site, with 126,265 visits and an average dwell time of 6 minutes. And most importantly, it directly generated 626 new holiday leads, 200% higher than the campaign target.